MURFREESBORO — The MTSU Women in STEM Center is using a
$10,000 grant from the American Association of University Women Foundation to
eventually expose at least 1,000 Southern girls to career possibilities in the
fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

The AAUW
Foundation awarded the 2012-13 Community Action Grant last year, with some of
the funds used for upcoming events at MTSU, including the Feb. 6-8 Girls Raised
in Tennessee Science (GRITS) Collaborative Project Annual Conference.

The WISTEM
Center received the grant to help bring awareness of STEM — science,
technology, engineering and mathematics — as a potential career option for
young girls through events like Expanding Your Horizons conferences and
organizations who bring awareness of STEM to the girls they serve.

Expanding Your
Horizons, or EYH, conferences are held at MTSU in the fall, in Memphis and
other Tennessee cities, across the South and the rest of the nation. They
encourage girls and young women to pursue STEM careers.

“The grant will
allow us to be able to share with others the success we’ve had” with the
Expanding Your Horizon conferences, said Dr. Judith Iriarte-Gross, an MTSU
chemistry professor and director of the MTSU WISTEM Center. “It’s important
because we see girls who came to campus as fifth graders through our EYH now
studying STEM in college.”

The Feb. 6-8
conference, which will be held in the Tom H. Jackson Building on campus, has a
theme of “Building STEM Capacity for Girls in the South.” It is open to
individuals and groups with a strong interest in promoting STEM to girls. To
register, visit http://tinyurl.com/MTGRITS2013.

“We recognize
the need to raise awareness of STEM careers and to change the stereotypes about
STEM jobs for women,” Iriarte-Gross said. “We recognize that girls in middle
and high school are a large untapped source of STEM majors. Thus, we propose to
build STEM capacity for girls in grades five to 12 by creating an EYH
Consortium throughout the South. Through EYH, girls are empowered to become the
STEM professionals of the 21st century.”

Iriarte-Gross
said MTSU is serious about women in STEM.

In the first
year of the Expanding Your Horizons consortium, “we will provide professional
development on best practices and lessons learned from AAUW research and from
the EYH Network,” she said. “In addition, there will be enhanced workshop
leader training that includes strategies on how to increase minority
participation for both girls and workshop leaders and fundraising.”

“New EYH
conferences will be offered in the second year with support from the EYH
Consortium,” Iriarte-Gross added. “The target audience will be education
institutions and/or community groups who want to provide STEM opportunities for
girls, as well as girls in grades five to 12 who want to attend EYH.”

Iriarte-Gross
said “the anticipated outcome is the establishment of new EYH sites and the
opportunity for move than 1,000 girls in the South to explore STEM. The mission
of our project is relevant to the AAUW mission because EYH is breaking down
barriers and advancing gender equity for girls and women in STEM education and
STEM careers.”

“AAUW Community
Action Grants empower recipients to be leaders in their communities and in the
lives of women and girls through innovative ideas and programs,” said Gloria
Blackwell, director of fellowships, grants and international programs for the
American Association of University Women. “AAUW understands the power of local
community impact to break through barriers for women and girls, and we put our
money toward initiatives that align with our mission to advance equality for
women and girls.”

Since 1888, AAUW
has provided more than $90 million to 11,000 fellows and grant recipients.
Iriarte-Gross said one of the association’s early recipients was Marie Curie, a
Polish-born physicist and chemist who worked primarily in France, who became
famous for her pioneering radioactivity research.

###

MTSU is committed to developing a
community devoted to learning, growth and service. We hold these values dear,
and there’s a simple phrase that conveys them: “I am True Blue.” Learn more at www.mtsu.edu/trueblue. For
MTSU news any time, visit www.MTSUNews.com.